Natives versus Settlers: the Battle of Wildcat Creek, November 22, 1812

This battle is also known as the second Battle of Tippecanoe, since part of the windup to the battle took place on the Tippecanoe battlefield.  It's also known as Spur's Run, since after their encounter with a combined Native force Kickapoo, Winnebago and Shawnee commanded possibly by Tecumseh's brother, the detachments of the US Army and Kentucky and Indiana militia were content to do just that-spur their horses as far away from the area as they could.

By winter of 1812 tempers on both sides of the conflict were high.  The battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811 had broken the back of Tecumseh's Confederacy.  He was still alive, but dependent on the British in Canada.  Hundreds of his followers had fled, but others had stayed in the area.  The Battle of Fort Dearborn in August, 1812 and Pigeon's Roost Massacre of September, 1812, had local inhabitants demanding punishment of the remaining tribes.  It was only a matter of time before the two collided and things got very ugly.  A force consisting largely of Indiana and Kentucky militia under Samuel Hopkins and William Russell was dispatched on a punitive raid in the Tippecanoe area, taking the same route that Harrison had before the battle.  Russell destroyed a Kickapoo village but had to retreat to Cahokia, Illinois.  Hopkins and his Kentucky militia were driven back to Vincennes, and nearly became the victims of a prairie fire started by the Kickapoo.

Furious, Hopkins dismissed most of the Kentucky militia with him and turned to the regular Army.  Major Zachary Taylor (future POTUS) and the 7th Infantry, along with the few units of Kentucky and Indiana militia who had been spared Hopkins wrath traveled to the Tippecanoe battleground.  There, they found that the White dead from the original battle had been dug up and the corpses scalped or dismembered.  Natives believed that a person went to the afterlife with the same injuries he'd suffered in this life.  A dismembered enemy couldn't be a threat in the afterlife.  That explanation wouldn't have satisfied Hopkins and Taylor, whose men buried the dead and reached the remnants of Prophetstown.  The village once run by Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa had been partially rebuilt, with a large Kickapoo encampment nearby.  Both were deserted.  The army burnt the camp and the remains of Prophetstown and kept looking for their enemy.

On Wildcat Creek, a Winnebago village was found abandoned, the Natives having left in the face of the advancing White force.  Hopkins sent a detachment of men to burn that, as well.  On November 21, a Native fired on an advance scouting party, that hurried back to the main force, leaving a dead soldier behind.  On November 22, a detachment rode out to recover the body and found the severed head stuck on a pole, with a lone Native warrior standing beside it.  Incensed, some of the Indiana militia charged at the lone warrior who fled, leading them right into an ambush.  Shawnee, Winnebago and Kickapoo warriors, perhaps under the command of Kumakskau, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa's brother, open fire, killing twelve men.  The remainder put their spurs to their horses and fled back where they'd come.  Eventual losses were 17 killed and 3 wounded.

Scouts of the American force later learned that a larger party of Native warriors was heading toward Hopkins' main position.  A snowstorm deterred the attack.  On November 24, 1812, when the American forced reached the larger Native camp, it was abandoned.  The men turned back to Vincennes, several of them suffering from frostbite.  Samuel Hopkins was so worn out and depressed from his losses that he resigned his command.  He was brought before a court-martial and whitewashed, later becoming a Senator.

The exact location of the battle remains a mystery.  Each year, local reenactors commemorate this battle, one of the westernmost of the War of 1812.

Opposition: Zachary Taylor, 1784-1850

Most people remember the 12 President for his short term in office, barely 15 months from March, 1849-July, 1850.  Others remember his service in the Mexican War.  However, long before either, Zachary Taylor was prominent in two battles against Native Americans, the Black Hawk War and 2nd Seminole War. 

Like his colleague William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, 1784-1850, came from a landed Virginia family.  Despite their social position, they left Virginia when Zachary was still a child and settled in Louisville, Kentucky.  His father became wealthy in real estate.  Kentucky was still frontier and there was little opportunity for formal schooling.  Whenever he could go to school, Zachary was a quick learner.  He grew to manhood and enlisted in the Army in 1808.  Despite the family's wealth in land, he would need a day job and the army promised steady pay and relatively light duty while he quietly invested in land, slaves, and bank stocks.  In 1810, he married Margaret Mackall, also a settler in Kentucky, but from a prominent Maryland family.  The couple would have six children.

In the windup to the War of 1812, he was called to Indiana to take over command of what was then called Fort Knox, now Vincennes, Indiana (not the Fort Knox we know today).  He restored ordered to an unruly garrison and won the praise of Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison.  At that time, James Wilkinson, the commander of the American Army, ended up under court martial and Taylor was called to Washington to testify, missing the Battle of Tippecanoe and Tecumseh's Rebellion in the process.  He was soon back in Indiana, defending Fort Harrison and taking part in an expedition to what is now Illinois.  His first serious encounter with Native warriors, in the Battle of Wildcat Creek on November 22, 1812, ended up in a retreat.  He later won a colorfully named battle at Credit Island.  He was only a captain when the War ended.  He resigned his commission in 1815, and reenlisted a year later as a major.

The next few years saw Taylor in command of various outposts, rising from major to lieutenant-Colonel.  He was promoted to colonel in time for the Black Hawk War of 1832.  However, aside from a few skirmishes, the war soon fizzled and it was back to garrison duty.  However in 1837, he was dispatched to Florida and met the Seminoles at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee on December 25, 1837.  There, he faced a Native command team consisting of Billy Bowlegs, Abiaka, and Coacoochee, among others, none of them happy that, just weeks before, Osceola and Coacoochee had been taken prisoners under a flag of truce.  Technically, the battle was a draw, with the Seminoles inflicting casualties on already rattled U.S. troops and Taylor's men depleting cattle and other food sources the Seminoles couldn't afford to lose.  However, the U.S. government needed a diversion from the dying hero at Fort Moultrie who'd captured the public's imagination and billed Okeechobee as a victory, promoting Taylor to Brigadier-General. 

At about this time in his life, Taylor began to think about politics, using his new military fame to transition to a peacetime career.  The Mexican War intervened in 1846-1848, but after the war was over, it was Taylor's turn to run for President.  He was inaugurated in March, 1849, and served for little over a year.  On July 4, 1850, he attended a picnic in Washington, D.C. and ate cherries washed down with milk on a hot day.  Within a few hours, he was complaining of stomach troubles.  Days later he was dead of cholera, most likely food poisoning from whatever he'd eaten on July 4th, compounded with the crude medical tactics of the day such as purging and bleeding.  A 20th century autopsy on his remains found no evidence of poisoning or other foul play. 

Years later, after having agreed to remove to Oklahoma, Billy Bowlegs would come Washington D.C. on a delegation.  Touring the U.S. Capitol, he saw a picture of Taylor and smiled.  He pointed to himself and said, "me whip!"  I beat him!